Online retailers giving money back for charity

RETAIL Spend online, earn cash for your favorite charities

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, November 12, 2011

Mary Burns poses on her new couch along with Christmas gifts she bought for her family through Ark.com on Amazon in San Mateo, Calif. on Thursday Nov. 10, 2011.

Mary Burns poses on her new couch along with Christmas gifts she bought for her family through Ark.com on Amazon in San Mateo, Calif. on Thursday Nov. 10, 2011.

Photo: Tim Maloney, The Chronicle

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Mary Burns poses on her new couch along with Christmas gifts she bought for her family through Ark.com on Amazon in San Mateo, Calif. on Thursday Nov. 10, 2011.

Mary Burns poses on her new couch along with Christmas gifts she bought for her family through Ark.com on Amazon in San Mateo, Calif. on Thursday Nov. 10, 2011.

Photo: Tim Maloney, The Chronicle

Online retailers giving money back for charity

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The new couch that Mary Burns purchased on Amazon.com? It was sort of for a good cause.

So was the hotel voucher she bought from LivingSocial as a Christmas gift for her brother. And the photo book she and her mother made on Shutterfly.

The thousands of dollars Burns has spent online in the past few months - early holiday gifts, plane tickets, textbooks for her two teenage children - has helped her raise nearly $150 for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Rainforest Action Network and more than a dozen other nonprofits. Through San Francisco's Ark, about 5 percent of each online purchase was directed to a charity of her choice.

"Everybody would like to donate $100, but it's hard to do," said Burns, who lives in San Mateo and also donates separately to local charities. Here, "it's for stuff I would have shopped for anyway. It's very empowering to donate someone else's money."

The holiday shopping spree is about to begin, as is the annual drive to raise funds for nonprofits. Consumers are expected to spend $465.6 billion during the holidays this year, according to the National Retail Federation, a small incremental increase from last year.

But at the same time, unemployment and the stormy economy are prompting many people to hold back on donating to their favorite causes. Nearly 7 of 10 said that they plan to give sparingly to charity this year, according to a survey by Durham+Company, a consulting firm for nonprofits.

Enter Ark, which launched in September, and San Francisco's GoodSearch, which also includes GoodShop and GoodCoupons. Both take advantage of how online retailers reward websites for sending traffic - and business - their way. Though the revenue share sometimes only amounts to a few pennies, Ark and GoodSearch set it aside for charity. They also keep some of it to maintain their operations.

"We know this holiday season, given this economy, that people are cutting back on their holiday giving," said GoodSearch CEO Scott Garell. "If you do your holiday shopping at GoodShop, we can help fill that gap. We can give money to your cause."

Penny per Web search

Launched in 2005, GoodSearch began as a site that let people earn a penny for their dedicated charity for each Web search they conducted on GoodSearch, through a partnership with Yahoo.

Since then, it has expanded to include GoodShop, partnering with about 2,500 online retailers to earn anywhere from 0.5 percent to 10 percent of the bill, and GoodCoupons, offering special discounts to encourage its users to shop online. To date, it has raised about $8 million for more than 100,000 nonprofits.

Today, it is introducing its latest addition, GoodDining. By eating at participating restaurants, including about 200 in the Bay Area, and using a credit card that they registered with GoodDining, diners earn from 3 to 6 percent of their final tab for their cause. Through a partnership with Rewards Network, a restaurant marketing service, GoodDining tracks purchases made at any of the 10,000 restaurants.

One of the tricky aspects of the proposition, however, is for people to remember to shop online through the site, and for them to come back again and again.

To that end, Ark has added a social-networking layer, much like Facebook, to its site. Members can sign in through Facebook and connect with their friends and favorite causes on Ark. Each time they make a purchase and raise some money, it is announced in their news feed. Friends can also like it, comment on it and share it.

There's also a gaming element, with a leaderboard that tracks the site's top earners. Users can also score badges, such as when they recruit a friend to the site.

$10,000 for charity

In just a few months, the startup has raised about $10,000 for charity. Ark has partnered with about 2,000 online retailers such as Amazon, iTunes and Orbitz to direct 5 percent back from each purchase. Users accumulate a balance and can have it distributed to as many participating nonprofits as they would like.

Ark is also planning to partner with DonorsChoose.org so that users can contribute to local classroom projects. And it plans to introduce a feature to suggest potential projects and causes to donate to based on each purchase.

Ark co-founder and CEO Patrick Riley, who received a doctorate from UC Berkeley this year and is the former director of user experience at Emeryville's Lithium, a social media consulting firm, said he was inspired to start Ark to harness the Internet to encourage giving.

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